Following a successful trial, the
introduction of the system to the rest of New Zealand began in December
1989, with the first Card Phones being installed in Auckland. For the
first few months after
the introduction, the cards were sold in
unsealed, clear plastic slips. The $2 card was used as a complimentary
card and it had an adhesive label applied to the slip. The label was
printed with the words
"$2 Introductory Card (GST Incl) for Limited
Period Only". There are two types of these labels known. The first was
produced on a dot matrix printer and examples of these are quite scarce.
The second was commercially printed and is relatively common. See
illustrations.

The $2 card is known with European Zeros
Ø in the serial number.

Short
Long

Another variety with this set is that each of the four
cards either has short 9mm magnetic strips at the top left and bottom
right of the reverse, or has long 16mm magnetic strips, as can be seen
in the two cards above.

The $5 is also known with a deep notch similar to the trial cards.
There are six mint cards known with this notch and around 40 used cards.
Below is one of those six mint cards.
An interesting observation on this
card is that the 2NZLB serial number is in a significantly smaller font
than the normal cards.

A Collector Pack was produced for this
issue, but was never released. A few of these Packs made it out to the
public, without any cards included. The Pack is the same style as the
Commonwealth Games Pack that was officially released later, but only has
four card pockets and has the Telecom Logo embossed on the cover.